Aristophanes

Aristophanes (446 BC-386 BC) was an Athenian Greek comic playwright who was best known for his works The Clouds (423 BC), The Wasps (422 BC), The Birds (414 BC), Lysistrata (411 BC), The Women at the Thesmophoria Festival (411 BC), and The Frogs (405 BC). He was nicknamed "the Father of Comedy" for his comic dramas.

Biography
Aristophanes was born in Athens in 446 BC, the son of Philippus. He became a comic playwright with the goal of entertaining a clever and discerning audience, and he wrote plays for the great dramatic festivals of Athens in search of prestigious awards. He wrote forty plays, eleven of which survive today, and he pioneered the genre of "Old Comedy", recreating the life of ancient Athens and wielding the power of ridicule, the use of which in The Clouds inadvertently led to Socrates being tried and executed. His second play The Babylonians was accused of being slander against Athens by Cleon, and, after the case was argued in court, Aristophanes mercilessly caricatured Cleon in his subsequent plays. He came to befriend Euripides at Pericles' symposium in 431 BC, and Aristophanes shared many of his caricatures with him. Aristophanes survived the two oligarchic revolutions and democratic restorations of the Peloponnesian War, and he served on the Council of Five Hundred for a year. He died in 386 BC.